“I should burn you where you stand.”
I stiffen, pulling back from where Kaye rests in the passenger seat of the car. I was about to take her into my arms before Fulton spoke. Now I’m glad I didn’t. I turn to face her, spread my arms wide, palms to the sky at my sides.
“Do it,” I beg. My stomach roils, lining my gut with lead and making my skin feel too tight, too hot. Guilt coils around my neck like a snake ready to strike. Like a weight hanging over my head. “It’s what I deserve.”
Fulton’s face, all graceful angles and smooth beauty, hardens with divine fury. Like the archangel whose power she embodies, her eyes are lit with a fire that blazes from within, waiting on her call. All she’s missing is a sword and the picture would be complete.
She shakes her head. That kind of justice would be too easy a punishment, and we both know it. There’s only one person who can redeem or condemn me, but first we have to get her back. I bend again to take her in my arms only to find myself blocked by Adeon and Jaspar.
Adeon looks me up and down, his chest puffing with crossed arms. I don’t know how to react. It’s so unlike his normally pacifistic nature.
“We’ve got it from here.” Jaspar places an arm on mine, sympathy shining from his expressive eyes.
What can I do? Fulton, Jaspar, Adeon, Milo, Eko, Agus… even Vita. We may have started as weary allies, but somewhere along the way they became my friends. And Kaye’s.
I stand aside and let them take the most important person in my life away.
It’s Adeon who folds Kaye in his arms, cradling her to his chest with care. Jaspar presses a kiss to her forehead, and I don’tcare for the troubled look marring his face. I’ve never seen the man so serious.
He looks to Fulton, then me. “Her future is there, but it’s almost like a film wrapped over the image. There are shapes of what could be, but… I’ve never seen anything like it before.”
Like a satellite entering a gravitational field, I’m drawn to her, moving instinctively closer. Fulton steps into my path, blocking the way with a fist of fire ready to snake up her skin. She’s got me and she knows it. I’ve seen her whole body consumed by flames and she walked it off like it was nothing, because it was to her. Heavenly fire is her gift and if she wants it, the rest of us will burn.
“Don’t do anything stupid, Zane.” As if the sight of her weren’t enough to put me in my place.
I nod. Back slowly away. “Call me if there’s any change. If you need anything at all.”
The look on Fulton’s face tells me in no uncertain terms “she’ll think about it.” Again, I can’t say that’s not fair. More than I could ask for, even.
Back in the car, speeding down the highway on the outskirts of New Malcolm, my phone rings in my pocket. My heart picks up a beat, hope spearing through me that maybe it’s Fulton. Maybe Kaye woke up.
I wait just a moment, until I’m off the highway, before I pull the device from my pocket. An unknown number lights up the screen.
“Hello?” Only a select few have this number. It’s unregistered, the phone a burner paid for in cash with no connection to anyone or anything.
“Is it strange to say that it’s good to hear your voice again, Zane?”
My stomach plummets, souring as recognition registers in my mind. “Considering you tried to murder me? Yes. What do you want?”
His laughter rings in my ear. I hate that sound. “What if I called to apologize?”
“Bullshit.” I know I sound as bitter as I feel but I don’t care. My hands shake with the restraint ofnotpunching the window out beside my head. “You killed Moira. Nothing you could say or do would change that. And when I find you, C—and I will find you—I’ll crush your throat with my bare hands. And the best part? You’ll let me. You’ll smile at me and mouth gratitude as your brain is deprived of oxygen and life fades from your eyes.”
The bastard chuckles as if I said an endearment rather than detailed a threat. “We’ll see, won’t we?”
“What do you want?” Exhaustion weighs down my shoulders, and the light has long-since turned green but I can’t bring myself to care. There’s no one around. Cornfields to the right; forest to my left. A road that stretches between, and somewhere beyond that a home suddenly empty of the one person who would know exactly what to say to make any of this better.
“You were supposed to keep her safe.” C’s voice has turned thick and ugly. Calm, pure rage, all the more frightening because of its clear control. “You were the one person I trusted with her. And what did you do, Zane?”
“You killed my fiancée!”
“And you turned my sister into a shell! You shattered her mind into fragments so small she may never be the same again. Does that make you proud, Zane? An eye for an eye—Moira and Kaye?”
I have to swallow back the thickness coating my throat, the anguish and guilt and fury at him. And at myself more than anyone.
“How do you know that?” I choke past the blockage.
His haggard breath echoes down the connection. “I’ve been monitoring you for a while, Zane. You think I couldn’t find someone to hack a chip in a burner phone? I know where you are. Who your friends are. Who hides you. My benevolence has kept you alive, not your stealth. Hiding in your own house. That might work on those simpletons in City Hall, but you and I know better.”
